How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. -Thoreau's Journal, August 19, 1851
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads. - Walden, "The Pond in Winter"
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? Letter to H.G.O. Blake, May 20, 1860
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. - Walden, "Conclusion"
In Wildness is the preservation of the world. - From the essay "Walking"
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. Walden, "Economy"
Things do not change; we change." - Walden, "Conclusion"
Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something. - Letter to H.G.O. Blake, March 1848
The question is not what you look at, but what you see. - Journal, August 5, 1851
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. - Walden, "Where I Lived and What I Lived For"
It is not enough to be industrious. So are the ants. The question is: What are we industrious about? - Letter to Harrison Blake, November 16, 1857
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain." - From Thoreau's Natural History of Massachusetts
… if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. - Walden, "Conclusion"
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. Walden, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For"vocabulary
Walk Like Thoreau
Walden
Act I, Act II, Act III, Act IV, and Act V.
vocabulary
Walden, or Life In The Woods, by Henry David Thoreau
from Resistance to Civil Government, by Henry David Thoreau (p. 1-4) (p. 5-8)
Read Thoreau: Quotations